Business

The Fortune 100 Companies With the Highest Engagement on Twitter [CHART]

For brands, having more followers on Twitter doesn't necessarily mean having more users talking about your company — in fact, just the opposite seems to be true.

Sling Digital, a Twitter advertising optimization service, analyzed the Twitter activity for all Fortune 100 companies who were active on Twitter and had at least 50,000 followers — 31 brands in total. The report found that, with few exceptions, the percent of followers who engage with talk about a brand (by its Twitter handle or by its proper company name) on a monthly basis tends to decline as the number of total followers increase.

Google, for example, has more than 5 million followers, but only about 4% of their followers talk about it on Twitter. Walmart, on the other hand, has fewer than 300,000 followers, but an impressive 41% talk about it.

On average, Sling found that just 8.8% of Twitter followers for each of these companies talk about or engage with it on the social network. The reason, according to Sling, is that most big brands are still using Twitter as a one-way publicity tool rather than using it to have a true two-way conversation.

"Most big brands are still using Twitter as a publishing channel rather than an engagement channel," Saif Ajani, Sling's co-founder, told Mashable. "They're replicating the one-way conversation strategy they use for the rest of the web, rather than using it as a two-way communication channel."

Ajani argues that this issue is further compounded by the fact that most brands tend to focus on that small percent who do engage, rather than going after those who don't. "There's a silent majority out there that likes your brand but doesn't talk about you," he says. "Find out who they are and what they're talking about."

Big brands appear to be running up against a similar problem on Facebook, too. A separate study last month found that only 6% of fans engage with big brands on their Facebook page.

Even so, some brands like Walmart, Target and Disney appear to be getting it right. The chart below shows the big brands with the highest percentage of followers talking about them.

Mashable
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